Comparative religion

The interconnected histories of Judaism and Christianity are explored in this compelling volume honouring the influential work of Jeremy Cohen. Cohen’s pioneering studies have reshaped our understanding of these religious traditions emphasizing the crucial role of cross-religious engagements in forming their self-perceptions and identities.

Comprising fifteen chapters the book is organized into four thematic sections. The first section Literary Mirrors and Inter-Religious Representations explores patterns of internalizations (mis)representations and appropriations between competing religious traditions. The second section Physical and Figurative Encounters addresses the roles played by visible and physical markers in setting interreligious boundaries and exchanges. The third section Agents of Anti-Jewish Discourse focuses on Christian thinkers of the late Middle Ages who propagated anti-Jewish measures or prejudices across different genres and causes. The final section The Transformability of the Jews and the Hermeneutics of Inter-Religious Conversion examines the cultural and intellectual impact of different efforts to convert Jews and Jewishness.

This collection of new studies by leading medievalists serves as a fitting tribute to Jeremy Cohen’s groundbreaking contributions and offers readers an insightful look into the complex world of medieval and early modern religious identity.

The complex and multifaceted religious phenomenon called Gnosticism continues to fascinate both specialists and the wider audience. This volume explores the “metamorphoses” of Gnosticism through the analysis of selected examples. Late antique Gnostic groups and schools of thought developed and even changed their ideas when interacting with other religious groups and with various sources. Confrontation and polemics with the so-called “Great Church” and with other Christian groups were crucial to doctrinal elaboration of all parties involved. On a different side one can trace the metamorphoses of Gnostic ideasthrough the centuries as these ideas influenced and were reinterpreted by other religious and cultural traditions and currents from Manichaeism to medieval dualistic movements modern esotericism and even contemporary literature.

The essays gathered in this volume focus on two main topics namely how ancient Gnostic groups developed their doctrines by interpreting and reworking their wide range of sources (Jewish early Christian Platonic ones etc.) and how ancient Gnostic ideas and motifs survived – with new forms – in later philosophical religious and literary works up to the twentieth century.

The volume consists of three sections the first being dedicated to early anti-Gnostic controversy in texts embedding Jewish-Christian and Petrine traditions and using Gnostic motifs for polemical purposes; the second to some treatises from the Nag Hammadi corpus and other Gnostic manuscripts (plus Epiphanius’ Panarion) so as to provide fresh insights into late antique Gnostic texts and groups; and the third to three case studies of the modern reception and reworking of Gnostic writings and ideas.

Judaism Christianity and Islam have always formed re-formed and transformed themselves in conversation. That is these religions have come to exist in all their varieties by interacting with thinking about and imagining each other. In this sense they are co-produced linked by a dynamic and ongoing inter-dependence. The fifteen essays collected in this volume explore moments of such religious coproduction from the second to the twenty-first century from early pilgrimage sites to social media. The case studies range across textual and material cultures showing how a variety of artefacts coins rituals communities narratives theological doctrines and scholarly concepts were all co-produced across the three religious traditions. In so doing they present a panorama of possibilities from the past as well as a taxonomy that can help us think about the future of religious co-production. An introductory essay describes the advantages of approaching the past present and future of these religions through the lens of co-production and reflects on crucial methodological issues related to the understanding of Judaism Christianity and Islam as co-produced religions.

Simon Claude Mimouni a été titulaire de la direction d’études « Origines du christianisme » à la Section des Sciences religieuses de l’École pratique des hautes études entre 1995 et 2017. Il est l’auteur d’une œuvre académique considérable qui a renouvelé en profondeur la manière dont les historiens conçoivent habituellement le judaïsme et le christianisme anciens. Ses travaux insistent notamment sur deux composantes souvent négligées voire ignorées du judaïsme antique : le judaïsme chrétien et le judaïsme sacerdotal et synagogal. Ce volume lui rend hommage. Il réunit quarante contributions groupées selon trois perspectives : « phénoménologies du judaïsme et du christianisme » « histoire et catégorisation sociales » « rhétorique de l’histoire et administration de la preuve ». Ces contributions qui relèvent de domaines et de thématiques variées témoignent de la fécondité des voies ouvertes par Simon Claude Mimouni dans la recherche sur les « religions » du monde tardo-antique.

The unique Arabic version of the Iberian canon law code 'Collectio Hispana' preserved in a mid-eleventh-century manuscript of the Royal Library of El Escorial has been deemed “the most distinguished and characteristic” work of medieval Andalusi Christian writing. It represents an exceptional source witness to the internal legal organisation of Christian communities in Muslim-dominated al-Andalus as well as to their acculturation to Islamicate environments. Yet the Arabic collection has received only little scholarly attention so far. This volume presents the results of a recent interdisciplinary research project on the Arabic canon law manuscript flanked by contributions from neigbouring fields of research that allow for a comparative assessment of the substantial new findings. The individual chapters in this volume address issues such as the origins of the Arabic law code and its sole transmitting manuscript its language and translation strategies its source value for both the persistence and transformation of ecclesiastical institutions after the Muslim conquest or the law code's position in the judicial practice of al-Andalus. The volume brings together the scholarly expertise of distinguished specialists in a broad range of disciplines e.g. history Arabic and Latin philology medieval palaeography and codicology archaeology coptology theology and history of law.

On 25 September 1710 Pope Clement XI finally promulgated the 1704 decree Cum Deus optimus which condemned the toleration of certain Confucian rituals among Chinese Catholic converts and the use of the Chinese terms tian and Shangdi to refer to the Christian God. This papal decision antagonised the Kangxi Emperor and devastated the Jesuit China mission. Although the Jesuits were prohibited from publicly refuting the decree the Flemish Jesuit François Noël sought to defend the Jesuit position by publishing his voluminous scholarship on the Chinese classics. Among other works in 1711 Noël published two seminal contributions to the history of Sinology: the Sinensis imperii libri classici sex or Libri sex and the Philosophia Sinica a sophisticated treatment of Chinese metaphysics ritual and ethics. While the Libri sex achieved some degree of influence in the Enlightenment through the French translation of the French Jesuit historian Du Halde and the writings of the philosopher Christian Wolff the Philosophia Sinica was actively suppressed by the Superior-General of the Jesuit order. Yet it is in this latter work where the full breadth of Noël’s originality and intellectual contribution can be found. Noël reinterprets the Jesuits’ position through the lens of Neo-Confucianism integrating concepts such as li taiji yin and yang in his reading of Chinese philosophy. With contributions from Sinologists and intellectual historians this book offers the first systematic study of this pioneering work.

The formal study of the collection of Jewish and Christian texts transmitted under the name of Sibylline Oracles highlights the continuity of the model of biblical prophecy while underlining the heritage of Greek didactic poetry. The interest of this approach is to situate the Sibylline Oracles as a literary work in the context of contemporary Greek versified literary production which implies on the part of their successive editors a familiarity with Greek poetic forms related to a common scholar background.

The study of the retelling of biblical episodes aims at identifying the passages where the fictitious Sibyl claims to announce the events of the biblical past and confronting these narrative sequences with contemporary rhetorical theories of paraphrase in order to highlight the formal technique that runs through them and the interpretation of the biblical hypotext that it presumes. Most of the rewritings preserved in the corpus are compatible with the prevailing doctrine of the third century ce.

À l’époque médiévale en Orient et en Occident se conjuguent sur la figure mythique du roi Salomon des aspects variés et parfois contradictoires touchant aussi bien au secret qu’à une diffusion d’idées et de représentations visant à un consensus social et politique. Les contributions ici réunies s’inscrivent dans une optique comparative dans la mesure où la place qu’occupe Salomon dans les trois religions du Livre (judaïsme christianisme islam) n’a fait que croître et embellir durant la période médiévale dans le cadre d’une symbolique du pouvoir en partie commune et de ce que l’on pourrait qualifier une « culture de l’équivoque » (Bruno Roy). Paradigme du roi sage et juste d’après le texte biblique Salomon est en effet également un souverain dépravé pourvu de 700 épouses et de 300 concubines femmes qui au temps de sa vieillesse détournèrent son cœur pour l’inciter à suivre d’autres dieux et à sombrer dans l’idolâtrie. Son sort dans l’au-delà a ainsi fait l’objet de nombreuses spéculations. En outre plusieurs traités pseudépigraphiques grecs des premiers siècles de notre ère ainsi que la tradition juive rapportée par Flavius Josèphe et abondamment exploitée dans l’Occident médiéval (notamment à partir du XIIe siècle) en font un roi exorciste et magicien capable de contraindre les démons à lui obéir. Salomon joue également un rôle fondamental dans la littérature magique byzantine copte et arabo-musulmane dont certains spécimens ont été traduits ou adaptés en latin. À l’instar d’Hermès et d’Aristote il est donc l’un des grands héros emblématiques du vaste mouvement de transfert culturel entre l’Orient et l’Occident qu’a connu la seconde moitié du Moyen Âge.

This collection of essays explores the multifaceted representation of power and authority in a variety of late antique and medieval hagiographical narratives (Lives Martyr Acts oneiric and miraculous accounts). The narratives under analysis written in some of the major languages of the Islamicate world and the Christian East and Christian West - Arabic Armenian Georgian Greek Latin Middle Persian Ottoman Turkish and Persian - prominently feature a diverse range of historical and fictional figures from a wide cross-section of society - from female lay saints in Italy and Zoroastrians in Sasanian and Islamic Iran to apostles and bishops and emperors and caliphs. Each chapter investigates how power and authority were narrated from above (courts/ saints) and below (saints/laity) and by extension navigated in various communities. As each chapter delves into the specific literary and social scene of a particular time place or hagiographer the volume as a whole offers a broad view; it brings to the fore important shared literary and social historical aspects such as the possible itineraries of popular narratives and motifs across Eurasia and commonly held notions in the religio-political thought worlds of hagiographers and their communities. Through close readings and varied analyses this collection contributes to the burgeoning interest in reading hagiography as literature while it offers new perspectives on the social and religious history of late antique and medieval communities.

L’auteur de ce livre propose la comparaison critique de toutes les utilisations attestées du motif gnostique du blasphème de l’Archonte et l’étude de la transformation de la citation du texte d’Isaïe dans les textes gnostiques en examinant les particularités de chaque attestation. Cette approche permet entre autres de bien distinguer les différentes versions du blasphème de l’Archonte et de retracer autant que possible les différentes étapes de sa diffusion dans la littérature gnostique. Toutes ces variantes sont précieuses car elles permettent de préciser les destinataires visés par les différentes œuvres et les contextes socioreligieux spécifiques à chacune de celles-ci. L’Archonte apparaît tantôt comme un modèle de conversion à imiter tantôt comme un anti-modèle à rejeter comme le type de l’impiété religieuse. Ces présentations impliquent des destinataires et des situations communautaires différents si bien que les origines du motif du blasphème de l’Archonte sont diverses mais doivent être situées à l’intérieur du cadre de la construction du discours interreligieux. Le blasphème de l’Archonte apparaît alors comme un des volets de la crise identitaire du christianisme au ii ème siècle qui s’est cristallisée entre autres autour de la question de la véritable connaissance de Dieu.